Saturday, February 11, 2012

I've Fallen in the Doldrums, and I Can't Get Out.

I just made a shocking and horrifying discovery. You might want to sit down because here it comes:

When The Golden Girls first aired, Betty White and Bea Arthur were 63, Estelle Getty was 62, and Rue McClanahan was 51.

Are you as shocked as I was?

Not as shocking, but equally horrifying: except for Betty White, all of the golden girls are dead.

I know it seems like I'm exaggerating how horrified I am, but I'm really not. I guess I need to figure out why. (And what better place to do it than in a public forum--right?)

When I watched The Golden Girls regularly, I was twelve years old, and let me tell you something; those women seemed old. Actually, forget old. With their wrinkled skin, age-spot speckled chests, coiffed hairdos, and geriatric-chic pant suits, those women seemed ancient with a capital A.

I realize that to my twelve-year-old self, it's natural that fifty- and sixty-something-year-old women would seem really old, but I have to say, they seem pretty damn old to my thirty-seven-year-old self, too. And in comparison to me, they probably seem pretty old to you, too.

But wait--here's the kicker--as old as they may seem, I'm actually not that far behind.

Before you scoff and think, Silly Kel, don't forget what I said about Rue: she was only 51 when The Golden Girls started, which is a mere 14 years ahead of me. And, really, when you think about it, 37 is practically 40, and 51 rounds down to 50, and so now when you do the math, the difference in years dwindles down to 10. Yes, that's right. For all intents and purposes, I'm a scant 10 years younger than Rue McClanahan was when The Golden Girls first aired.

And, holy God, does that make me old.

For once, though, this blog isn't all about me. If I'm practically as old as the golden girls, what does that say about my mom? Well, let's see...my mother was born in July of '49, which makes her 62, which makes her roughly the same age as the three older golden girls, which makes her 11 years older than the youngest golden girl, which kind of makes her a golden girl herself, which makes her, well...old.

And that's something that's hard for me to accept.

I don't know whether or not it's just me, but I have a tendency to think of people as a certain age, always, and the age I associate with my mom is somewhere around her late thirties--a far cry from 62, wouldn't you say? Don't misunderstand me; my mom certainly doesn't act like she's in her thirties--okay, wait, that's not entirely true. My mom might not act like a normal person in his or her thirties, but she most definitely acts the same way as Carol McIntyre did her thirties. That's not the point, though. The point is that my mother has aged right before my eyes, and I didn't really notice.